Council won't be hunting down illegal brothels

Newcastle council says it gets very few community complaints about illegal brothels operating in the city and will not be taking a more proactive approach to weed them out.

An Islington brothel owner has complained about increasing numbers of people advertising in local papers for sex services, clearly operating outside council's regulations.

But council's compliance manager Adam Gilligan, says for council to take action it needs evidence that the sex workers are having a negative impact on their neighbours.

"We're not only looking to establish a technical breach in terms of an absence of a development approval, but we're also looking to establish if we're taking a matter before the courts, that there's an impact on the community as well, so we're often driven by complaints from neighbouring residents or another business," he said.